At All Costs

"No, Emily!" she said sharply. "It's not that." Emily looked at her, green eyes suddenly vulnerable, and Honor shook her head even harder. "Hamish and I both love you," she heard herself say with a fierce intensity which surprised even her. "Nothing can change that. And nothing between me and Hamish could ever change the way he feels about you."

Emily looked at her for two or three more seconds, then nodded slowly. Not just in acceptance of Honor's reassurances, but in admission. Strong as she was, confident as she was in herself, she could never quite forget that Honor was all of the things, physically, that she could no longer be. There was always that tiny edge of fear she couldn't quite crush that the sheer vibrancy and physical health radiating from Honor would, indeed, change the way Hamish felt about her.

"Honor is right," Hamish told her softly, crossing to sit on an ornamental stone bench beside her life-support chair. He reached out and captured her one working hand in both of his, lifting it to press a kiss onto its back. "In an odd sort of way," he continued, gazing into her eyes and reaching out to cup the side of her face with his right hand, "you've become the center for both our lives. Maybe we've both simply been too contaminated by our Grayson experiences, but somehow the three of us have become a unit, and neither Honor nor I would ever change that, even if we could."

He paused for a moment, and she closed her eyes, pressing her cheek into his palm.

"But," he continued, after a moment, "we're both more than a little concerned about how you're going to react to the news we do have for you, love."

"In that case," she said, with something very like her normal tartness, "perhaps the two of you should stop trying to prepare me for it and go ahead and tell me what it is."

"You're right," he agreed. "So, to cut straight to the conclusion, there was a screwup with Honor's medical records. Both of us thought her contraceptive implant was current. It wasn't."

Emily looked at him. Then her eyes darted to Honor, opening very wide, and Honor nodded slowly.

"I'm pregnant, Emily," she said quietly. "Hamish and I never thought this was going to happen. Unfortunately, it has. And because it has, we-all three of us, not just Hamish and I-have to decide what we're going to do about it."

"Pregnant?" Emily repeated, and the sudden torrent of her emotions surged over Honor like an avalanche. "You're pregnant!"

"Yes." Honor crossed to Emily and sank to her knees, facing the older woman, and Nimitz and Samantha crooned softly, comfortingly. She started to say something more, then stopped, forcing herself to wait while Emily fought her way through her own emotional tumult.

"My God," Emily said after a moment. "Pregnant." She shook her head. "Somehow, this is one possibility that never occurred to me." Her voice quivered, and her working hand tightened on Hamish's left hand as she blinked hard. "How... how far along are you?"

"Only a few weeks," Honor said quietly. "And I'm third-generation prolong, so we're looking at a pregnancy almost eleven months long. Or we would be, at least, if I had the option of carrying the child to term normally."

"Oh, God." Emily tugged her hand out of Hamish's grasp and reached out to Honor. "Oh, no." She shook her head, green eyes welling with tears. "Honor, if something happens to you now-!"

"I'd like to say nothing will," Honor said gently, taking Emily's hand and pressing it to her own cheek as the confusion of Emily's initial response focused itself down into a single, overriding emotion. Concern. Concern not over the consequences of the pregnancy for her, or even for the three of them, but for Honor's safety, redoubled and concentrated by the fact of her pregnancy.

"I'd like to say nothing will," Honor repeated, "but I can't, because it could. A lot of people are going to be hurt or killed before this war is over, Emily. And a lot of babies are going to be born because of people's fears of what may happen to them, or to the people they love. All of which mixes into the concern Hamish and I feel over how you may feel about this."

The last sentence came out as a question, and Emily shook her head.

"I don't know how I feel about it," she said with an honesty which was almost physically painful for Honor. "I'd like to say that all I feel is happy for you-and for Hamish. But I'm only human." Her lower lip quivered ever so slightly. "Knowing you can give Hamish the physical intimacy I can't hurts badly enough sometimes all by itself, Honor. I don't blame you for it; I don't blame Hamish for it. I don't even blame God for it, very much, anymore. But it does hurt, and I'd be lying if I told you it didn't."

A tear trickled down Honor's cheek as she tasted Emily's determination to be totally candid, not just with Honor and Hamish, but with herself. Perhaps to be totally candid with herself for the very first time.

"I look at you, Honor," she said, green eyes glistening, "and I remember. I remember what it was like to have two legs that worked. To be able to stand on my own. To be able to move. To be able to feel anything-anything at all-below my shoulders. To be able to breathe by myself."

She looked away and drew a deep, shuddering breath.

"Did Hamish ever tell you just how bad the damage was, Honor?" she asked.

"We've discussed it... some," Honor said with an odd serenity, returning candor for candor, and reached out to wipe a tear from Emily's cheek with her thumb. "Not in great detail."

"It wasn't just my spine that was smashed in that accident," Emily said, still looking away from Honor. "They repaired everything they could, but there was an enormous amount of damage that couldn't be fixed. Or that there was no point in fixing, anyway, because I haven't felt anything except my right hand-anything at all, Honor-below my shoulders in sixty T-years. Nothing."

She looked back at Honor again.

"I can't survive outside this chair. Can't even breathe on my own. And there you are. So healthy, so fit. And so beautiful, though I doubt you actually realize it. Everything I once was, you are, and, oh, God, Honor, there are times I resent it so. When it hurts so much."

She stopped for a moment, blinking, then smiled tremulously.

"But you aren't me. You're someone else entirely. A rather wonderful someone else, actually. When I first realized-when you first told me-how you and Hamish truly felt about one another, it was hard. I realized, intellectually, at least, that it wasn't your fault, and I recognized how dreadfully the two of you had hurt yourselves in order to avoid hurting me. And because of that, and because of the political consequences if the world had believed the Opposition's smear campaign, I made the decision-the intellectual decision-to accept what couldn't be changed and try to minimize the consequences.

"It was only later, when I'd come to truly know you, that I realized emotionally, deep down inside, that you truly are a part of Hamish, and so a part of me, as well. But that still doesn't make you me. And the hurt I still feel sometimes when I look at you standing beside Hamish, where I used to be able to stand, or think about you in his bed, where I used to be, is so much less important than who you are and what you mean to Hamish... and to me.

"And now this." She shook her head. "Now, whether you meant to or not, you've moved still further beyond me. Moved to do something else I used to be able to see myself doing. A baby, Honor." She blinked again. "You're going to have a baby-Hamish's baby. And that hurts, hurts so terribly... and feels so wonderful."

A glow of joy flowed out of her, like sunlight through the chinks between thunderheads. It wasn't really happiness-not yet. There was too much jagged-edged hurt and a lingering resentment which knew it was both unreasonable and irrational. But it was joy, and within it Honor sensed the capacity to become happiness.